Reccuring Dreams and What They Mean
by TheDarkFlygon
Summary: Akira has always had the same fever dream since he was seventeen: he sees himself back when he was a teenager caring for his younger sister, probably about to die. However, seeing a guardian angel in its last iteration has to mean something has changed within his life since then.


It feels like a familiar situation. That's weird, considering he has never gone through this before, right?

He's seventeen, his sister is seven, and they're in the streets of Den City again to find a place to shelter themselves from the winter's bitter cold. He finally has enough money to rent a small, shabby flat for them with one bed and a thing that looks like another. He, of course, occupies the thing: the bed is for Aoi who has the misfortune to have an awful childhood courtesy of their parents dying and the rest of their families being vultures attracted by their inheritance. They're in the streets because they need to buy some groceries for tonight and, if they can afford it, some tissues for her to blow her nose in. Poor Aoi has caught a cold despite all the precautions he thought he had taken. That's on him: he was the one who got sick first and unwillingly gave it to his sister.

"Brother, I'm cold," Aoi says in a timid voice, almost in a whisper, as they cross a road. The least expensive convenience is on the other side of the road.

That's surprising, he feels pretty warm for this time of the winter break. He's lucky he doesn't have classes to attend on top of this. However, he makes sure to take off his scarf, use a cheap disinfectant spray on it and wrap it around her tiny body.

"Here you go," he tells her as he does so, making sure her facemask stays on so her cold doesn't worsen. She started coughing yesterday, it can't be good.

"Brother," she asks him, "what about you…?"

"I'll be fine."

He knows he won't be "fine" for very long when his cough digs out phlegm from his lungs.

 _As she watches Akira's face distorts ever-so-slightly in his sleep, Ema has a few questions rising in her mind._

" _Does he do that often?" she asks Aoi sitting across the other side of the bed._

" _I can't tell for sure, Brother usually tries to stay alone when he feels bad," she replies with concern all over her face._

 _It looks like the guy is trapped inside a nightmare._

" _I don't know why," Aoi adds. "I wish he'd tell me. He's always done that…"_

Seconds later he finds himself in the one-room flat he shares with Aoi. She is diligently doing her homework. Sometimes, he wishes she'd ask him for help, but she never does. In this case, it does help him: he can easily sneak out of the room to cough up the phlegm setting in his chest. Today was probably his last job for a while: his vision blurs easily, people don't like to have sick mercenaries because they never accomplish their work properly. He cannot risk Aoi's future on that. His? Oh, with how quickly this illness is degenerating, he won't have the time to think about it for much longer. He needs to act soon, before he has to abandon her.

This is seriously starting to mess with his brain.

He coughs one last time before going back inside the flat, staying in front of the door with his back against the wall, an arm wrapped around his ribcage and a hand on his mouth. The pain is terrible and burns through his entire respiratory system by now, from the tiniest corners of his lungs to his nostrils, making him jerk violently when he gets into a fit that seemingly never ends. He doesn't want anyone to see him like that, especially not Aoi who has to keep a part of childhood innocence like he had the chance to have gotten, but he still spots a woman with long pink hair going down the stairs and looking at him concerned. She feels familiar, even if they never met before…

He enters the main room again and his sister turns around on her chair to see him do so. Ah, he's going to miss her when he'll be gone…

"Aoi, I…" He freezes in place and instead prefers to give her better news. "We're going to the doctor tomorrow… We finally have the money for that…"

Yet she doesn't look relieved. Is she cold? Is she concerned about school?

"Don't worry, I'll call the school…" He barely retains a cough and almost falls because his legs cannot hold his weigh properly anymore, barely catching himself up on the door frame.

Aoi doesn't respond, and instead gives him doubtful eyes and a saddened expression.

 _His right hand, just before the bounty huntress's eyes, is clutching the bedsheet under it, fingers grasping for something to clutch onto. He must be fighting against something terrifying in his sleep._

" _M…" He murmurs, seemingly to no one but himself. Aoi and her ears immediately sharpen onto this sound. "Mother… Help us…"_

 _Aoi immediately freezes. "He'd say that when he was sick, when we were younger," she says as an explanation for why she is suddenly so disturbed._

" _I guess it's a reflex to call for your mother when you're unwell," Ema comments with her hand on her chin. Seeing Akira call for his mom? Now that was something she couldn't have expected. If the context was any different, she'd have immediately made fun of him for that. As it stands… It's terrifying to witness._

 _She takes off one of her gloves and puts a hand on her forehead, then on his. He's still burning underneath her palm. The dreams he's going through must be terrifying, if you could call them that. It's probably closer to a nightmare._

" _And, according to you, why does he never let you help him, Aoi?"_

 _Not going to lie, she has her own idea as to why behind her mind._

" _I don't know. I wish Brother would tell me why at least. He used to always care for me, before we could have a real home… But he never accepted that I do it the opposite way around."_

They're in a doctor's waiting room. He picked the nearest one, not the least expensive one: with Aoi sick and him unable to carry her on his shoulders, it was preferable that way. They have a margin: the advantage with being sick, in a way, is how he almost never feels hungry anymore. Less food, more medicine for her. That's almost a good bargain in a black market. The room smells like nothing, or at least he thinks so, and is incredibly hot. He's only dressed in a shirt and a pull, a gift from someone who took pity on him once, when everyone else has their coats on in the room. It must be him: his fever, because he ought to be feverish to explain the hallucinations he gets sometimes, has screwed with all his senses for what feels like an eternity.

This pink-haired woman from earlier is back. Maybe she's a hallucination, but he feels better when she's here, for some reason. She sits next to him, Aoi doesn't seem to have noticed her as she sleeps on his lap. They stay quiet, but that's enough: he cannot hold a conversation properly at the moment anyway, so it's better that way. Her pink eyes in a tone so similar to her long hair tied in a ponytail almost hypnotize him to forget about how much his chest hurts him. His heart is, for once, beating faster for a valid reason instead of his congested breathing. Is that… falling in love? He has forgotten to be a teenager all along… She seems far older than he is, though. Ah well…

 _His hand grips Ema's nearest wrist without warning, as the panicked breathing comes to a calmer halt. She feels her face redden but tries to stay put and composed in front of Aoi who seems more surprised than she is shocked._

" _W…" Ema smothers a scream of surprise before it can get out of her mouth. "What the hell…?!"_

 _Aoi doesn't say anything, instead looking very curious as she stares at the hand's twitching fingers. That doesn't answer any of her questions!_

" _I frankly didn't expect that to happen…" she admits as she too looks at it. She cannot bring herself to part it away from her imprisoned wrist anyway. It'd seem like a cruel thing to do to someone so vulnerable._

" _Stay… stay here, please…" his weak, groggy voice mutters again._

" _Seems like someone is in need of affection…"_

 _Ema gulps concern down. This is eerier than she could have ever seen coming._

He's in the examination room, the doctor looking over him. He had promised himself, he wouldn't give in: if he did, then they wouldn't be able to afford Aoi's medicine. If it wasn't for her sister begging the man to examine her brother and the offer of getting it done free because he looks, indeed, nearly deadly ill, he wouldn't be here. Instead, everything is cold against his skin: the air, the medical tools, this man's hand, his own clothes. Everything is too cold and then it's too hot, it can't settle for anything, and his breathing is still awfully ineffective. He wants to pass out and never wake up again if that means having that stop.

Once that's said and done, he remembers his mission and tries to hurry up. He's going to lose consciousness soon, that's certain, considering how his vision is swimming around and how his fever hasn't lowered since the doctor insisted on taking his body temperature after having noticed how boiling his skin was. He takes Aoi's hand in his, making sure it wasn't the one he was coughing into, but his legs buckle up under his weight, his eyes close on themselves, he's falling and he doesn't want – he needs to escape, find Aoi a new house when he'll be gone too, hoping she can make it out big in the world that didn't want them – but his body stops responding and everything fades to black, slowly, in blurs of colours fading with his senses numbing once and for all. Is he dying? Is he going to wake up again? That's out of his reach, he doesn't want to be unconscious, he doesn't want to leave Aoi alone, he has to wake up and –

He emerges in the _real_ world, where things _have happened_ and _matter_ , in a gasp and a mix of cold and hot sweat, breathing heavily and quickly, hand on his heart, the other still gripping onto something. He looks around the room: this isn't the doctor's room from nine years ago. It's his bedroom, in their own home, and there is a very familiar pleasant smell of a flowery perfume on his right. He reddens, nervous and embarrassed, when he notices his hand was wrapped around Ema's wrist. Wait… When did she enter? When did he land there? Why is Aoi on his left, looking so concerned yet so intrigued? When did he even go to bed? The sun peeking through the curtains indicates it has to be the afternoon too.

"Lemme guess," Ema tells him with a smirk and eyebrows contradicting her smugness. "You're confused, you have no idea how you arrived here, and you're craving for an explanation?"

He only looks away, too embarrassed to ask the question himself.

"Simple enough. You passed out on your secretary at work and the first person they could find in your phone call history was your truly's, Ema Bessho herself. I got the privilege to calm that girl down from panicked sobs and to drive you home on a bike."

She's too proud to actually spit out how much she was concerned for him, for what was inside his dreams.

"Brother," Aoi's voice makes his head turn left, "can I ask you something?"

He nods as an agreement. His throat feels dry, he wants to cough, but he doesn't want to cough up blood again… Oh, wait, he's in the present now. That means he doesn't have _that_ anymore. He should have noticed it was a dream as soon as he saw a woman he hadn't seen back then hypnotizing him. He still doesn't want to cough.

"Why do you never let me near you when you're sick?" Aoi questioned, eyes not intimidated enough anymore to search for an answer in his. Too bad his gaze couldn't answer in his stead.

"Because of this," he replies, purposely stalling as not to seem to vulnerable to Ema and his sister. "These fever dreams, I mean."

"You're still calling that a "dream"? I'd have called these nightmares," Ema comments with a click of the tongue. She's trying to make the unfunny at least somewhat amusing.

"They technically are dreams, and it's always the same that comes back…"

She watches her hirer (or partner? Maybe "partner in crime" fits better) try to focus with foggy eyes and hitching breathing like the overworked pseudo-machine he is. His voice is low, slow, almost quiet and has the saddening property of reminding her of her father's when he was close to meeting death. She is tasting worry dripping down her body like corruptive acid, that sucks. This is what happens when she lets herself get too sympathetic. Never again.

Never, fucking, again.

"It's always the same?" Aoi asks with fingers fidgeting with the hem of her skirt.

Akira isn't really sure of how to answer the question. He doesn't want her to worry or remember that time of their life that was a hardship with no end, where he thought he was going to die and had no solution to truly go against it, where he was too poor to afford a doctor but too sick to be able to work and pay for one. But the thing is: it's always this that serves as his fever dreams. He usually simply ends up crying and clutching his chest as phantom pains come back. It's a minor trauma compared to everything he's seen flying around this past year to the point complaining about it feels like trying to paint himself as a martyr he isn't.

"Yes. I always see myself in the same place, doing the same things, and the end is always the same."

"What… dream is it, Brother?" Aoi asks again, "if you don't mind telling me of course…"; and the worry she shows towards him makes him nauseous against himself. _She shouldn't have to be that concerned for him if he was good at what he's trying to accomplish._ He cannot not provide her with an answer if she's that concerned, so he swallows down his pride, almost forgetting there is also Ema on his other side.

"I always get sent back to the time where we both got sick, nine years ago." Aoi's face distorts immediately. It looks like she remembers this as vividly as he does. "It always ends in the doctor's room, where I pass out and wake up after reviving, well, you know what happened that day…"

"And _what_ happened?"

Ema's voice suddenly chimes in and he turns his head to her as abruptly as he can without his aching joints giving up on him. She looks upset but curious, as if he owed her that information. He doesn't, though… Why would she be interested in it anyway?

"Huh…" He's, frankly, speechless. "I got very sick that time, that's it…"

"Aoi told me, you know."

He feels himself decompose in front of her. That… That's more intimidating than embarrassing.

"It's about that time where you got pneumonia and didn't want to get yourself examined so you could afford her medicine, right?"

This is getting worse by the minute.

She sighs. "With how terribly this could have ended, don't be surprised that she wants to be able to approach you when you're sick. Who can tell if you're not going to do that again? Oh, wait," she interrupts herself and glares at him, "you did that none earlier than _today_."

He gulps again, not saying a word. She sounds offended enough without his input.

"And I thought I was the reasonable one of us two. You beat me to the bush here, Mr Zaizen."

Aoi remains silent, going over how much this could be terrible for her brother to relive through as soon as he gets a fever. From her slightly inexact memories from nine years ago, she can remember how bad his coughs sounded and how much the doctor and his wife sheltering them for a couple weeks were worried for him and his chances to make it out alive. Terrible times she couldn't ever forget even if she wanted to. She, however, cannot bring herself to leave the room, so she stays there and erases herself from the commotion taking place.

"Listen, Akira," Ema makes herself sound sterner, "I've had to bring you here for a couple times already. You have to remember that time where you passed out on us after a mission with Blood Shepherd because you hadn't slept again? It'd be time for you to handle yourself properly."

She then looks on the side, almost ashamed of what she's telling him, before looking back at him with red creeping on her cheeks.

"I think you've worried us all, Aoi and me and your secretary too while we're at it, too much with your shenanigans. It's time to slow everything down and actually think of yourself once and for all. That's why you couldn't have lasted as a bounty hunter, you don't have a capacity of self-preservation!"

A pause again, a change of tone once more.

"I'm saying that for Aoi and you, of course. Now, your intentions are usually not wrong, so I can't even scold you like a little brat, that's annoying. Plus, I'm sure Aoi wouldn't want me to anyway. Your sister loves you, you know."

 _And so do I_ , she wanted to say. "I also happen to need my main employer up and running to afford my rent and groceries," she instead told him.

She puts a hand on his forehead again, gulping down her honour and pride with it.

"You're still very warm. Aoi, please, can you get me some ice?"

The teenage girl complies with a quick "yes!" and exits the room almost running. That's good, she needs her private conversation with him.

"Ema…? Is there something wrong…?" he asks her, worried by seeing her so troubled. He may be running a fever, he still senses it when there's that little something with the people he knows.

"Well, more or less you," she replies drily. "But hey, you've allowed me to afford my rent multiple times, so I suppose I do depend on you at times. That's one reason more why you should stop being stubborn. Who am I to speak, though?"

"That reminds me, sorry for cutting you off, but... You started appearing in my dreams, lately."

Ema stops speaking all of a sudden, heart skipping a beat. That's astonishing to hear, almost speech-stealing.

"Wait, you mean I was in this fever dream of yours? That's… flattering. Is that why you were gripping my wrist and calling for…" Never mind. "For someone?"

"Yes," he confirms it with his glassy eyes looking at the ceiling, "you were. It was soothing to be around you in it, for some reason… Even when I was reliving waiting in that room where everyone was staring at me… You were breath-taking, making breathing far easier with clogged lungs…"

Ema almost chokes on her own breathed-in oxygen.

"Wait, was that a pick-up line?!"

"I-it wasn't…!" Akira reddens even further than the flushing of his face made him look already.

They remain silent for a few heavy moments, Aoi having brought back the ice just in time for them to find a distraction. Ema recovers her composure before he does, so she takes the matter in her hands.

"In a way, I guess I was your guardian angel in your dreams. I can be so too in real life if you want," she ends with a flirty note. Teasing him is fun, after all.

That doesn't mean she doesn't actually want to do that on the side, far from it. She watches his sister's back for him, to grant her freedom without letting her expose herself to all the dangers there are out there… Why not watch over him in the first place?

"I suppose you could… If that means I don't get scolded again," he plays with it.

"Deal then."


End file.
